Browsing by Author "Shealy, Tripp"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Choice Architecture as a Way to Encourage a Whole Systems Design Perspective for More Sustainable Infrastructure
    Harris, Nora; Shealy, Tripp; Klotz, Leidy (MDPI, 2016-12-30)
    Across fields, more sustainable and resilient outcomes are being realized through a whole systems design perspective, which guides decision-makers to consider the entire system affected including interdependent physical and social networks. Although infrastructure is extremely interdependent, consisting of diverse stakeholders and networks, the infrastructure design and construction process is often fragmented. This fragmentation can result in unnecessary tradeoffs, leading to poor outcomes for certain stakeholders and the surrounding environment. A whole systems design perspective would help connect this fragmented industry and lead to more sustainable outcomes. For example, a whole systems design approach to relieve traffic on a highway might see beyond the obvious, but often ineffective, response of adding a new vehicle lane to encourage a solution such as repurposing existing road lanes from automobiles to above-ground “subway” systems. This paper discusses influences to whole systems design and how intentional choice architecture, meaning the way decisions are posed, can nudge decision-makers to employ whole systems design and result in more sustainable infrastructure. By uncovering these influences and organizing them by the social, organizational, and individual levels of the infrastructure design process, this paper provides the needed foundation for interdisciplinary research to help harness these influences through choice architecture and whole systems design for the infrastructure industry.
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    Cognitive barriers during monitoring-based commissioning of buildings
    Harris, Nora; Shealy, Tripp; Parrish, Kristen; Granderson, Jessica (2019-04)
    Monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) is a continuous building energy management process used to optimize energy performance in buildings. Although monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) can reduce energy waste by up to 20%, many buildings still underperform due to issues such as unnoticed system faults and inefficient operational procedures. While there are technical barriers that impede the MBCx process, such as data quality, the focuses of this paper are the non-technical, behavioral and organizational, barriers that contribute to issues initiating and implementing MBCx. In particular, this paper discusses cognitive biases, which can lead to suboptimal outcomes in energy efficiency decisions, resulting in missed opportunities for energy savings. This paper provides evidence of cognitive biases in decisions during the MBCx process using qualitative data from over 40 public and private sector organizations. The results describe barriers resulting from cognitive biases, listed in descending order of occurrence, including: risk aversion, social norms, choice overload, status quo bias, information overload, professional bias, and temporal discounting. Building practitioners can use these results to better understand potential cognitive biases, in turn allowing them to establish best practices and make more informed decisions. Researchers can use these results to empirically test specific decision interventions and facilitate more energy efficient decisions.
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    Cognitive differences among first-year and senior engineering students when generating design solutions with and without additional dimensions of sustainability
    Hu, Mo; Shealy, Tripp; Milovanovic, Julie (2021-02-08)
    The research presented in this paper explores how engineering students cognitively manage concept generation and measures the effects of additional dimensions of sustainability on design cognition. Twelve first-year and eight senior engineering students generated solutions to 10 design problems. Half of the problems included additional dimensions of sustainability. The number of unique design solutions students developed and their neurocognitive activation were measured. Without additional requirements for sustainability, first-year students generated significantly more solutions than senior engineering students. First-year students recruited higher cortical activation in the brain region generally associated with cognitive flexibility, and divergent and convergent thinking. Senior engineering students recruited higher activation in the brain region generally associated with uncertainty processing and self-reflection. When additional dimensions of sustainability were present, first-year students produced fewer solutions. Senior engineering students generated a similar number of solutions. Senior engineering students required less cortical activation to generate a similar number of solutions. The varying patterns of cortical activation and different number of solutions between first-year and senior engineering students begin to highlight cognitive differences in how students manage and retrieve information in their brain during design. Students' ability to manage complex requirements like sustainability may improve with education.
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    Engineering students’ agency and career goals to engage in sustainable development: Differences between first-year students and seniors
    France, Jared; Milovanovic, Julie; Shealy, Tripp; Godwin, Allison (Emerald, 2022-11-24)
    Purpose: This paper aims to explore the differences in first-year and senior engineering students’ engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainable development. The authors also sought to understand how topics related to sustainable development in engineering courses affect senior engineering students’ goals to address these issues in their careers. This work provides evidence of how students’ agency beliefs may be shaped by higher education, which is essential to workforce development. Design/methodology/approach: Findings stem from two national surveys of engineering first-year (Sustainability and Gender in Engineering, n = 7,709) and senior students (Student Survey about Career Goals, College Experiences, n = 4,605). The authors compared both groups using pairwise testing by class standing. Findings: The results indicate that undergraduate studies tend to reinforce students’ engineering agency beliefs to improve their quality of life and preserve the environment. Significantly more senior students selected career goals to address environmental issues compared to first-year students. In general, students undervalue their roles as engineers in addressing issues related to social inequities. Those topics are rarely addressed in engineering courses. Findings from this work suggest discussing sustainability in courses positively impact setting career goals to address such challenges. Research limitations/implications: The study compares results from two distinct surveys, conveyed at different periods. Nonetheless, the sample size and national spread of respondents across US colleges and universities are robust to offer relevant insights on sustainable development in engineering education. Practical implications: Adapting engineering curriculum by ensuring that engineering students are prepared to confront global problems related to sustainable development in their careers will have a positive societal impact. Social implications: This study highlights shortcomings of engineering education in promoting social and economic sustainability as related to the engineering field. Educational programs would benefit from emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. This approach could increase diversity in engineering education and the industry, and by ripple effect, benefit the communities and local governance. Originality/value: This work is a first step toward understanding how undergraduate experiences impact students’ engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainability. It explores potential factors that could increase students’ engineering agency and goals to make a change through engineering.
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    Framing to reduce present bias in infrastructure design intentions
    Hancock, Patrick I.; Klotz, Leidy; Shealy, Tripp; Johnson, Eric J.; Weber, Elke U.; Stenger, Katelyn; Vuppuluri, Richa (Cell Press, 2022-03-18)
    Infrastructure professionals (N = 261) were randomly assigned to either a future or present-framed project description and asked to recommend design attributes for an infrastructure project. The future-framed condition led professionals to propose a significantly longer infrastructure design life, useful life to the community, and acceptable return on financial investment. The findings suggest a straightforward and inexpensive way to lessen present bias in various design contexts
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    Higher Perceived Design Thinking Traits and Active Learning in Design Courses Motivate Engineering Students to Tackle Energy Sustainability in Their Careers
    Milovanovic, Julie; Shealy, Tripp; Katz, Andrew (MDPI, 2021-11-14)
    Engineers play an important role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations, which aim to provide a more sustainable environment for future generations. Through design thinking, creativity, and innovation, sustainable engineering solutions can be developed. Future engineers need to acquire skills in their engineering curriculum to feel equipped to address sustainable design challenges in their career. This paper focuses on the impact of perceived design thinking traits and active learning strategies in design courses to increase senior engineering students’ motivation to engage in energy sustainability in their career. A national survey was distributed to senior engineering students in the United States (n = 4364). The survey asked students about their motivation to engage in sustainable design, their perceived design thinking traits (i.e., integrative feedback, collaboration), and if they experienced active learning strategies in design courses (i.e., learning by doing). The results highlight that higher perceived design thinking ability increases senior engineering students’ interests in designing solutions related to energy sustainability. Active learning experiences positively influence senior engineering students’ interests in designing solutions related to energy sustainability. These findings show the importance of teaching design thinking in engineering courses to empower future engineers to address sustainable challenges through design and innovation.
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    How Exposure to ”Role Model” Projects Can Lead to Decisions for More Sustainable Infrastructure
    Harris, Nora; Shealy, Tripp; Klotz, Leidy (MDPI, 2016-01-30)
    A role model, whether an individual or a project, can inspire similar performance in others. This research examines such a phenomenon during the design process for more sustainable physical infrastructure. In this empirical study, engineering professionals (n = 54) were randomly assigned either a modified version of the Envision rating system for sustainable infrastructure, which was changed to include details from an exemplary role model project, or the current version of Envision, with no role model. Professionals given the role model version of Envision achieved on average 34% more points (SD = 27) than the control group (p = 0.001). A positive role model project appears to lead engineering professionals to higher goals for sustainability performance in their design decisions. This finding, and the corresponding line of interdisciplinary research, can be used in decision-structuring interventions, which are a relatively low-cost approach to support greater sustainability in physical infrastructure development.
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    A Mycorrhizal Model for Transactive Solar Energy Markets with Battery Storage
    Gould, Zachary Michael Isaac; Mohanty, Vikram; Reichard, Georg; Saad, Walid; Shealy, Tripp; Day, Susan (MDPI, 2023-05-13)
    Distributed market structures for local, transactive energy trading can be modeled with ecological systems, such as mycorrhizal networks, which have evolved to facilitate interplant carbon exchange in forest ecosystems. However, the complexity of these ecological systems can make it challenging to understand the effect that adopting these models could have on distributed energy systems and the magnitude of associated performance parameters. We therefore simplified and implemented a previously developed blueprint for mycorrhizal energy market models to isolate the effect of the mycorrhizal intervention in allowing buildings to redistribute portions of energy assets on competing local, decentralized marketplaces. Results indicate that the applied mycorrhizal intervention only minimally affects market and building performance indicators—increasing market self-consumption, decreasing market self-sufficiency, and decreasing building weekly savings across all seasonal (winter, fall, summer) and typological (residential, mixed-use) cases when compared to a fixed, retail feed-in-tariff market structure. The work concludes with a discussion of opportunities for further expansion of the proposed mycorrhizal market framework through reinforcement learning as well as limitations and policy recommendations considering emerging aggregated distributed energy resource (DER) access to wholesale energy markets.
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    Pictures Matter: How Images of Projected Sea-Level Rise Shape Long-Term Sustainable Design Decisions for Infrastructure Systems
    Milovanovic, Julie; Shealy, Tripp; Klotz, Leidy; Johnson, Eric J.; Weber, Elke U. (MDPI, 2022-03-04)
    Community input matters in long-term decisions related to climate change, including the development of public infrastructure. In order to assess the effect of different ways of informing the public about infrastructure projects, a sample of people in the United States (n = 630) was provided with a case study concerning the redevelopment of the San Diego Airport. Participants received the same written information about the projected future condition of the airport. In addition, participants received images either portraying current conditions or portraying conditions in 2100 based on NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) sea-level rise data. Participants were asked to choose 7 out of 21 design options to implement in the redevelopment project. The framework used for the design options stemmed from the Envision rating system. We analyzed the participants’ selection of the credits using generalized linear mixed models. Those that received the images portraying the future were significantly more likely to select design options that would reduce the risk of climate change and flooding. Images portraying sea-level rise had different effects depending on participant demographics. Such images increased the selection of design elements related to the climate and risk for participants identifying as female or as Democrat. For participants identifying as male or as Republican, the same images increased their selection of design elements to enhance community public space. The results demonstrate the positive effects of portraying the future in terms of encouraging focus on long-term sustainable design decisions for infrastructure systems.
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    Sustainable Construction Risk Perceptions in the Kuwaiti Construction Industry
    Ismael, Dalya; Shealy, Tripp (MDPI, 2018-06-03)
    Sustainable construction is fundamentally different than traditional construction because it requires whole systems thinking, early collaboration across stakeholders, and core principles like reducing resource consumption, eliminating toxins, and applying life cycle costing. Construction professionals unfamiliar with this mindset and approach may perceive sustainable construction as risky. One of the global regions in need of more sustainable construction is the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. The MENA region is one of the fastest developing in the world. However, it is the slowest one in implementing sustainable construction practices. Kuwait, in particular, contributes 53% more carbon emissions per capita than the United States. To understand how the Kuwaiti construction industry perceives risks associated with more sustainable construction, a survey was developed with 52 risk elements in which 131 industry professionals responded. The results indicate that industry professionals perceive a lack of public awareness as the risk element with the highest probability of occurrence. The risk element with the highest possible negative impact on future projects is designers’ and contractors’ inexperience with sustainable construction. Other risks were found to include a high initial cost for materials and overall project costs. Educational interventions, changes in risk allocation, and behavioral science to reframe upfront costs as long-term savings are offered as possible solutions.